Sookie short stories

Saturday, March 14, 2009

7:30am ObjectDesire (OD) picks up Nocturnalinnc and Arianwyn (henceforth NC and Aria) at their hotel then drives to Dallas' house. This is a bit early as we had a late night drinking margaritas and listening to Latin Jazz the previous evening (whoosh, Dallas can boogy, especially after a couple of drinks; NC and Aria not too bad either!).8:30am Depart the metroplex with Dallas behind the wheel. Have many road snacks, but Dallas is peeved that OD forgot Cheezits.

9:00am Stop at Starbucks. Need coffee...

10:30am Stop to buy Cheezits.

11:00am Cross into Area 5, Lousiana (we have previously obtained permission from Sheriff Eric Northman). Visiting wiki girls are required to "raise the roof" and "woot, woot" as we cross the border. They comply.

11:30am Pass FotS church. Double-take then note location for later reconnoiter.11:50am Yippeeee! Bill's house is still fabulous and beautiful. No construction foreman is present today so we can loiter a bit longer taking pics of house and each other in front of house. Dallas leaves gravel on driveway, but NC swipes a rock.

12:15pm Enter Mansfield--visit courthouse and magic tree (Bubba's establishment is still there). Park near Mansfield Police Station trying to decide if it stood in for BonTemps station in TrueBlood. It is a close call, so we then debate whether it is against the law to take pictures of a police station. Sneek a few shots with much anxiety. Dallas pulls out in path of only other car on road in Mansfield and we narrowly miss a collision. Now we are really rattled and fear arrest at any moment. ( Oh-- it wasn't that bad, but it was the only other car in Mansfield and it was right in front of the police station-"D")12:45pm Having avoided arrest, we decide sustenance is in order. In honor of Sookie, we eat footlong chili cheese dogs at Sonic (Sookie likes Sonic doesn't she?). Dallas whips out iphone and begins Twitter roleplay with @SookieBonTemps.( Dallas also DID NOT have a footlong chili cheese dog!)

Afternoon: *Times now blurry to protect secret location of Jason's house and Rattray's trailer*YES, WE FOUND JASON'S HOUSE! No glamouring was involved, unless you count Dallas glamouring her computer. We are able to identify the various outbuildings and the picnic spot from Stackhouse family flashbacks.A short way down the road, we find the spot where the Rattray's trailer was upended by our Bill.2ish: Much pleased with ourselves, we head back toward Shreveport.Sneak stealthily up on FotS Church. Jump out and "snap, snap, snap" take photos. Drive around back...even creepier back there. Hold breath until we finally make it out of parking lot and back on the road.

2:45pm Take NC and Aria past the Shreveport filming locations--site of Monroe vamp house, Lucky's Liquors and Ogilvie-Werner House seen in opening credits, and the Strand theatre.

3:30pm Drive to Lake Bistineau to see if we can find where Terry and Andy fished and Sam ran nekkid through the trees. Lake is beautiful and we find some likely spots. Take more photos.We take a good look around on drive to and from Lake Bistineau because this is the route Sookie, et. al. would take to Shreveport from Bon Temps.5:00pm Arrive at Ralph & Kacoos for dinner (this is where Sookie and Quinn dine on their date). See stuffed tiger in lobby--hope it is no one we know. Order way too much food, attempt to eat as much of it as possible.

6:30 Back on the road home. Twitter role-play is heating up. Aria has had instructions in iPhone and Twitter and reads tweets to the rest of us. Much hilarity ensues, with Dallas having to pull over to tweet responses. Aria given new instructions on iphone keypad after we pull over in one too many dark spots and (I swear this is true) a coyote stares us down. We are laughing so hard, OD (who has a cold, stops breathing--okay, okay just gasping for breath).We laugh hysterically all the way back to Dallas. Plans are made for a June trip to Los Angeles. Sookie is invited via Twitter.Stay tuned :-)haha -this is great thanks so much OD!

Yes, we can't disclose the location of the Jason house or the Rattray trailer ( known as Four Corners ) as they are located at private homes and the owners have not disclosed the location in any other interviews. Bill's house has been written up many times so that's not disclosing any secrets. I love this area more and more every time we go back.

I can't disclose who this is in the photo at least one person is one of the 3 other people on the trip and I took the photo.

**We did do the radio show last Monday night with @SookieBonTemps and all the girls called in and talked about the trip and the twitter hilarity if you missed the show you can listen here

When news broke that Kiwi Anna Paquin and her True Blood co-star were dating, writer-director Alan Ball was not best pleased.

"I'll be honest when it first happened, I was like: Uh oh," he told the Sunday Star-Times.

But he quickly came round, as the romance between Paquin and Englishman Stephen Moyer blossomed.

"It's the real deal. They really fell in love, and you can see that in the show. You can see the attraction and chemistry. It's all good."

In the show, which screens on Prime from Wednesday, Moyer plays 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton, who returns to live in a small Louisiana town and falls in love with Paquin's Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress who can read people's minds.

The two now live together in LA, though Moyer travels regularly to London where he has two children from a previous relationship.

In an interview with US TV Guide Moyer, 37, admitted the sparks flew with Paquin, 26, at the first audition for the series last year, but they deliberately kept it quiet.

"The show is the star, not the two people having a relationship."

In an interview with the Star-Times in today's Focus section, Ball said Paquin had "aggressively" pursued the role. "When my casting director said, would you be interested in Anna Paquin, I said, uh, yeah, would she be interested in this?"

Even though she has a glittering career in movies such as X-Men, Ball realised True Blood could allow Paquin to do things she mightn't on the big screen.

He was right - it won her the 2008 Golden Globe award for best TV actress in a drama, to add to her 1993 Oscar for The Piano.

"She is the tent pole that this show hangs on. She is delightful in this role. She's charming, she's innocent, she's pretty, she's fiery, she's romantic, and you just really, really love her."

And she's just the same in real life, he says down to earth, professional, fun to be around.

But one of the big topics Ball had to canvass during casting was asking the pale and dark New Zealander a crucial question for her to truly become Sookie, the sassy and tanned southerner in the short shorts of Charlaine Harris's books: Are you willing to go blonde?

"She was like, 'Of course. This is something I would never do just on my own because it seems so superficial. But now I have an excuse to do it."'

The Twitter craze and our exclusive interview with @SookieBonTemps: Loving True Blood in Dallas Blogtalk Radio show

TONIGHT : March 9, 2009 Monday 9pm central

You won't want to miss this interview with @SookieBonTemps who will be "lettin' down the ponytail" and talking about what it's really like to be a twitter star!

We will be broadcasting live from Sookie Stackhouse's kitchen table in Bon Temps Louisiana. "Dallas" from the blog Loving True Blood in Dallas talks to @SookieBonTemps both in and out of character!

We want your questions! You can call in (646) 929-0825 or you can post you questions here. Please leave your wiki or other online name when you post your question because we are going to have a drawing for prizes.

To the grand prize winner, we will be giving away a Scrabble game! You folks that follow the True Blood twitters know all about that ..*wink, wink* and a fantastic sheriff's pin that we brought back from Louisiana!

We also will have some special guest's call- in, Arianwyn and Nocturnalnnc and Object Desire from the HBO True Blood FanWiki. Ari and NC just got back home after spending the weekend in Dallas and Louisiana and we'll talk to them about their impression, of spending Saturday in an around Bon Temps, in the not so fictional area of Northwestern Louisiana.

DESPITE THE rich scope of vampire mythology in literature and culture, few TV series have ever veered from the Dracula cliche.

Most, despite the runaway success of more quirky shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, were hit-and-miss.

Think Forever Knight, based on an 800-year-old vampire detective that was more CSI than supernatural or Kindred: The Embraced, clearly aimed at role-playing geeks. Then there was the spectacular failure of Blade when they tried to make it into a series and replaced Wesley Snipes with American rapper Sticky Fingaz. It was canned after one season.

So my hopes weren't high as I approached the new US TV series True Blood, which starts here this week, adapted from the best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.

On the surface, it didn't promise much beyond tired old cliches the main character is Sookie, a mind-reading white-trash waitress from deepest darkest Louisiana who falls in love with a vampire.

To make matters worse, I found out that the lead actress was none other than our own Anna Paquin. She may have won a Golden Globe this year for her role in True Blood, but my first and most lasting impression of her is as a whining nine-year-old in The Piano.

Call me unimaginative, but I just couldn't picture her out of braids and in what promises to be the sauciest vampire show on TV so far. But happily, Paquin proves her mettle from the first episode, with a Southern accent so thick you couldn't cut it with a stake.

Elisha writes to ask "Hey Dallas, Do you have any information on the book that's going to be released in October '09 called ' A TouchofDead'? "

No a Touch of Dead is NOT Sookie Book # 10 and Yes, it is a compilation of Sookie short stories but not all of them!

This is how Charlaine Harris describes the book :

Yes, a compilation of the Sookie short stories will be released in October. It's called A TOUCH OF DEAD and it has a charming cover by Lisa Desimini, my favorite cover artist.

These are not all the stories set in the Sookieverse (the rights to those have not reverted), but since I write Sookie only for Penguin Putnam, I didn't need to reclaim the rights.

Charlaine Harris

Now, I would have you note that Night's Edge is also being republished this fall and my guess would be that one of the stories not included would be 'Dancer's in the Dark' which appears in this anthology. 'Dancer's' is the 2004 Sookieverse novella about the dancing vampires, Leyla and Sean and a MUST read.Night's Edge was originally published by Harlequin and they are notorious for holding on to publishing rights ...so you may have to buy the republished edition of Night's Edge and A Touch of Dead to get all the Sookie (and Sookieverse) short stories.Personally, I wouldn't wait until November there are used copies available and I think 'Dancer's' holds all important clues to Dead and Gone, Book 9.You can also get all the short stories ( yes, even the one 's that are out-of-print ) for free HERE

Kind of cryptically CH might also be saying that A Touch of Dead might not include 'Tacky' from My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding which is a Sookieverse story but published by St. Martin's Griffin.

I will post more when we know more ... I can't wait to see the cover!

You can read past 'Question and Answers' from "Go Ask Dallas" Here and thanks, Elisha!

Everyone got the Swiss Miss question from yesterday right ...thanks to Tes, Dee, Kim and Rita.

It's just such a strange little scene, with Sookie sitting at the kitchen table sipping hot chocolate with Eric, Pam and Chow and being told that Bill has been kidnapped

Book 3, Club Dead

"Are you the king of Louisiana?" I asked Eric, giddy with all my mental effort to keep varying stories straight. I was laughing so hard that it was all I could do to keep upright in the chair. Possibly there was a note of hysteria. "Oh, no," he said. "I am the sheriff of Area 5." That really set me off. I had tears running down my face, and Chow was looking uneasy. I got up, made myself some Swiss Miss microwave hot chocolate, and stirred it with a spoon so it would cool off. I was calming down as I performed the little task, and by the time I returned to the table, I was almost sober.

**psssttt I think this scene might happen in Season 2 of True Blood, as a think the Bill kidnapping will be the end of season cliffhanger.

I don't post much about Twilight because I haven't read the books, nor have I seen the movie. ( I know, gasp!)I know someone of you are fans so this might be of interestRobert Pattinson is, for millions of girls around the world, the perfect hottie. With his piercing blue eyes and always messy hair, and given the part that has brought him to the attention of the fans, that of a vampire in “Twilight,” it’s no wonder he’s the object of adoration for so many. Yet, as he tells in the latest issue of GQ magazine, this kind of attention was the last thing on his mind when he set out to become an actor.

Speaking with the magazine, whose cover and pages he graces, Pattinson reveals that the whole fame game rather frightens him – so much so that he’s the type of guy who is in the habit of hunching in the hope that he’ll pass unnoticed. This is rarely the case, though, especially after the immense success that “Twilight” has enjoyed. And, with two other movies from the franchise coming along (“New Moon” and “Eclipse”), chances are that things are only going to get worse from this perspective......

All in all, Robert Pattinson makes both for a wonderful appearance and an intelligent conversationalist. For the full GQ interview, please go here

I frequently save the really graphically sexy videos to post on the weekends so that readers don't accidentally play the TB Music Video of the Day at work. This week I saved this video until the weekend because it is graphically violent and bloody one ..after all True Blood is not a warm a fuzzy TV show it's a murder mystery involving vampires and other deadly supernatural creatures.

It's a little much to see all the scenes at once, so wait until after breakfast ...